20 September 2012 10:10 AM

The Rhetoric May Change. Nothing Else Will

The cruel killing of two police officers has ignited a row so phoney that I hesitate to join in. Nothing of any interest or use will happen as a result of these two sad and irreparable deaths.

As the astute old liberal Kenneth Clarke has rightly said of the government’s crime policy in general ‘The rhetoric may change but the substance will stay the same’. This is as true of penal and police policy in general as it is of the present government, though I see the new Injustice Secretary has already given an interview in which he pretends to be ‘tough’, and nobody has laughed (except me).

And let us here pause for a moment to consider the waves of grief and loss, spreading out over years and decades, caused by the violent ending of these two women’s lives.

Forget all the soppy talk about the deceased person only being in the next room. Even for religious believers, who retain the hope of eternal life, death is still a slammed door, an end, a silence and an impenetrable barrier. What use it if the person is ‘in the next room’ if no effort of will or love can find the door to that room, let alone unlock it?

So many people have been robbed of hopes. So many people’s lives now lack a purpose they used to have. So many good things which would have happened will now never happen.

And the reason? We do not know and cannot speculate upon who committed this crime. That, I am glad to say, is still a matter for an impartial court of justice with the presumption of innocence.

But we can say with near certainty that the culprit, whoever it might be, had this single characteristic , the common feature of all criminals - arrogant selfishness.

Such a characteristic, unchecked either by moral force or the fear of punishment, is, if let loose in a society, as dangerous as a nuclear bomb. We are only just beginning to see the consequences of the amoral, punishment-free experimental society we so blithely allowed to be imposed on us 50 years ago.

The long afterglow of Christian moral law, and of Victorian and Edwardian law enforcement, is finally fading into twilight. Those who retained the habits of older British people, of deference to law they had made themselves, and whose principles they had been brought up to understand and respect, are dying fast. Our ordered peace existed in their hearts. When they are gone, it will be gone too.

Then there will be darkness. And I do not know what force in our society will be able to take us out of the dark age that is coming.

‘Bring back hanging!’ . The logic of this is in my view unanswerable. That is why those who advance it logically are not met with reason but with fury and scorn. But how can a post-Christian society accept a punishment based largely on the idea that even murderers have souls, and of course on the deeper idea, that human life is so uniquely valuable that the deliberate taking of it for evil ends is a crime of special horror? It will not happen now (though when this country finally sinks into the enlightened paradise for which the left have worked so hard for so long, I expect it will eventually return. It is in left-wing countries, such as Communist China and Communist Vietnam, that the death penalty is most commonly used, but without any of the safeguards that would make it acceptable).

‘Arm the police!’ Well, we already have an armed police. This has been done, and will continue to be done, without legislation. I see armed police officers every day. And I note that the uniforms of most forces are now designed to look semi-military, and give the impression that the person is armed even when he or she is not. Add a gun-holster to the ensemble already dangling from the average uniformed officer’s waistband, and it wouldn’t be a shock. The near unanimity with which media outlets described the two murdered officers as ‘unarmed’ made me wonder if there had been a briefing of some kind in which this fact was stressed. From what I have seen, there is little evidence that they would have been much safer if they had been armed. Nor would they have been. Handguns are largely useless weapons at the best of times, except to threaten people with, and even heavily-armed soldiers often die in surprise attacks.

If we do get a fully-armed force, they will of course increasingly find themselves imposing an informal, unjust, ill-regulated death penalty, against which all the powers of Amnesty International and Mr Clive Stafford Smith will not prevail, because it will not ever be admitted that it is in fact a death penalty. But it is an entirely useless one, since it has no moral purpose or consistency.

By the way, I often point out that the deterrent effect of the death penalty does not simply affect murder. It restrains criminal violence and the use of weapons in general. I’ve also pointed out that modern medical techniques save many lives which would have been lost in the 1950s and 1960s, so making ‘then and now ‘ comparisons of homicide figures rather misleading.

This morning I read an example of such a case in my own local newspaper, the Oxford Mail. This sort of thing is now counted too trivial to get into the national papers, though I think it once would have done. You may read it here Note that the victim nearly died and was left with his intestines exposed and a punctured lung.

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The long afterglow of Christian moral law, and of Victorian and Edwardian law enforcement, is finally fading into twilight. Those who retained the habits of older British people, of deference to law they had made themselves, and whose principles they had been brought up to understand and respect, are dying fast. Our ordered peace existed in their hearts. When they are gone, it will be gone too.

Then there will be darkness. And I do not know what force in our society will be able to take us out of the dark age that is coming.

I think even Peter's detractors would be forced to concede that he writes beautifully. There is a definite whiff of Old Testament to him.

John Aspinall - I don't know about Peter Preston, but I read your post and found many of your points interesting. Your comments on the 'death penalty is humane' argument were particularly good. You might also have pointed out that proponents of the death penalty often argue that murder is a crime so heinous as to warrant a particularly harsh punishment, which rather goes against the suggestion that executing criminals is doing them a favour.

I'm not entirely convinced by your section dealing with the alleged deterrent effect, however. Why does the fact that we can't know how many people were deterred by the death penalty leave us with 50% effectiveness? That figure seems arbitrary. Surely we just can't make any claims as to its effectiveness. And if the death penalty did deter in 50% of cases, that wouldn't make it no better than chance, and nor would it negate the 50% of cases in which it did deter. A medicine that cured 50% of those who took it would not be worse than chance, especially if the alternative cured only 40%.

Mike Barnes,yes i have read that killers of police officers often receive a high status inside prison,although back in the 1960s and 70s they would have had a very rough time from prison officers.you are quite right,nothing will stop this kind of crime,not even the death penalty,however the death penalty would be the correct punishment for that crime.

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, the Home Secretary, many Tory back-benchers, have gone on record recently deploring the lack of respect shown by many towards the Police, and recommending culprits should be jailed.
It has now become clear that they meant this to apply to those whom they would probably describe as "low-life scum", and not to Cabinet Ministers like Andrew "I'm the Chief Whip" Mitchell.

I often, though not always, agree with you.
On the death penalty, am undecided.
Your argument from general deterrence does not really convince me - countries that do not have the death penalty often have lower murder rates than those who do, although, of course, other factors contribute.
Can we really teach society the lesson that each life is uniquely valuable by TAKING a life? Personally, I think fighting against abortion as a form of legalised murder is a LOT more important to teach the value of each life, than giving the state the right to take life.
Also, as christians, shouldn´t we protect life, shouldn´t we keep up the hope even a murderer will save his soul by "turning around" - can we rob him of his chances to do so?
Just random thoughts.
Keep up the good work!

I take the force of Lucket Bell's arguments; I have often wondered if I could execute someone (or even kill animals, which I, like most, eat). Maybe (as John Hodson says) MY inability to do it does not remove the moral rightness of someone doing it. But would being an executioner "morally stain" the souls of everyone (as L. Bell says)? No doubt it would "stain" ours ... but everyones ...? A few years ago I saw a good documentary about executions (here in Britain) in the last decades of the practice. I'll never forget the words of the (death cell) clergyman, who said he dreamt about each one, for weeks afterwards ...
Surely jurymen who bring in a guilty verdict, knowing the death sentence is likely, might also feel that they are, effectively, "pulling the lever"? Certainly the experiences of all, who would be involved, are relevant.

Mr Hitchens,
Re: Capital Punishment,
I am in two minds about capital punishment. I have no doubt that it would deter many murderers, and other violent criminals. In that respect it would do a lot of good. On the other hand, occasionally people are released from a british prison, having been convicted of murder, and then proven to be not guilty. An example is Stefan Kisko, who was convicted in the 1980's of the murder of a young girl, for which he served many years in prison. Modern DNA techniques showed that the murderers DNA did not match mr Kiskos. He was released from prison, in poor health, and within a two years he was dead from that poor health, probably aggravated by his wrongful imprisonment. If we had had the Death Penalty in place, then he would have been hanged. There are probably more people like him; wrongly convicted of murder, languishing in prison.
This matter of wrongful conviction for murder is exploerd very well in Clint Eastwoods film "True Crime".
You say that you are prepared to accept that some innocent people will be wrongly hanged if we bring back hanging. This is a very cavalier attitude to take with other peoples lives. would you still say this if one of those innocent people was your child ?
I don't know what I would do if I had the power to restore Capital Punishment in Britain. It is not my decision. I would certainly approve the hanging of the criminals responsible for the two recent policewomen murders, and other murders. But how would I deal with the probable hanging of innocents? I don't know.By the way, I have faced very serious street violence myself; I was not seriously injured because I had the physical power to effectively defend myself.

So it seems that not just guns but Soviet surplus hand grenades are now available on the streets of Britain.I imagine a few of those lobbed into a Police Station would do some damage.Our rulers continue to put their heads in the sand .When I was young and read history books about the decline of the Roman Empire or the collapse of Weimar democracy I would ask the question Why did somebody not do something.?.Well I know the answer to that one now.

Hitchens neglects to add 'sense of entitlement' when describing Suspect A, a phrase that could be use to describe a huge number of people today who appear for the most part never to have been told, or heard even, the word 'No'.

Dimitri Cavalli,I would have thought the punishments handed out today would encourage vigilantism,but it seems not.
its often seen in latin america,africa and parts of asia,but quite rare in western europe.you would have thought after 40 years of liberal laws people would have had enough.

I too think there is a need to have the death penalty, but instead of hanging a more humane method of execution would be suffocation by nitrogen. This was shown in the documentary series Horizon ( a few years Ago ?), titled "How to kill a human being" (hosted by Michael Portillo). The condemned man would not feel like he is suffocating as he breathes in the nitrogen, because the body does not react to nitrogen in the same way as other forms of suffocation. Surely this humane method must win over the sceptics. Do we really want to keep alive such awful people that kill children, rape women, kill defenceless old people etc. I do not buy the premise that they had a terrible childhood that made them commit these heinous acts. By that reasoning, most of our ancestors should be murderers considering the squalor and poverty they endured in the previous centuries. There are many people who have had bad childhoods even now and do not kill or have the mental potential to kill. Peter Hitchens is right. Murderers are full of arrogant selfishness. Incidentally, the hangman Albert Pierrepoint stated in his biography (early 1970's) that he did not believe execution acted as a deterrent. With all due respect to Pierrepoint (he comes across as a very humane person, despite his trade) he died in the early 1990's, and I think that maybe if he lived on through to our era to see how much worse serious crime is compared to his era, then he might see things different. Even if it is not a deterrent, as I said earlier, do we really want to keep these awful people alive. ?

@ Nick Agnew.
Just a thought Nick . Arec you and others aware that police killers are revered in prison . A kind of elite .Not supprising as all inmates were put there because a copper caught them. So even lengthy prison time is not going to stop this slaughter.
If I were a copper then resignation becomes a serious option. As the elected governance at this time is still trying to reduce prison populations, not by the most sensible kind. but by releasing cop killers. Although I must say Harry Roberts time inside (is he still with us ) is the exception. And far more unkind, than a quick pain in the neck, boom finished .
Awaiting beatpoet's post ,if indeed he feels well enough to post ,on this afront to him and all police.

Luckett Bell. Your argument that someone ought not to ask someone else to do something he or she couldn't do themselves doesn't hold water. If the thing that is to be done is morally justifiable, the fact that you are not ‘prepared’ to do it yourself doesn’t mean it is wrong. ‘Morally speaking’ the fault lies within you. I am not saying I could pull the lever, but that doesn’t mean that the lever shouldn’t be pulled. In fact, if I conclude that the lever must be pulled but I am not willing to do so myself, I should burn up my energies questioning my own weakness and not hold back others from doing what needs to be done.

I do not believe Capital Punishment will ever return to the U.K,although i think it should for some murders,so if hanging will not return then the prisons of this country should go back in time,i do not mean back to the cruel days of 18th century newgate,but back 60 or 70 years,to the days of plain basic cells and the most basic food,no television,games or gym.The person that carried out those murders of the two police officers cannot be expected to change so life in prison should mean exactly that.

PH has described how the violence capable of killing someone in the country is enormous, and has risen sharply since the abolition of capital punishment. I don’t disagree with him, but is there a reference, or groups of sources he could point me to to verify the point?

Peter
As you know I have named this 50 years long project the BROEDERBOND to tar it
with the brush of the creators of Apartheid,because the Left equals them and especially Roy Jenkins.The DARK we are descending into will as night follows day
end with a repressive regime which will try to control all especially thought.
Orwell was right and the regime he describes must have come about over many years
as he describes,it is a pity his book makes no mention of a return to freedom.
This new order you describe will use the death penalty against it,s oponents and any who threaten it as well as criminals. As a believer I can only pray that our
God will intervene,but I certainly believe we are in the End Times,I am just glad
that I at 67 have much less threat to me from this project and will be gone before it happens,BUT am therefore able to hector ,lecture and harangue people and not worry of the consequences. I am at this age a TRUE REBEL.

I find myself in agreement with you on so many matters that I pay especial attention to your logic on the few in which I disagree.

Thus, I find myself in total harmony (sadly) with your statement in the paragraph beginning “The long afterglow of Christian moral law . . . ”

However, if I may comment on the subsequent paragraph about hanging: I find your logic in favour of reinstatement very compelling, especially in the context of recent high-profile cases of almost casual murder. I for one do not meet your arguments with fury and scorn, but I have another point of view which I have not found treated in previous comment. (Yes, I have made use of the excellent index, so please forgive me if I have in fact missed a relevant discussion.)

I hold that one should not, morally speaking, require anyone else to do that which one would not be prepared to do oneself - given the ability and the necessary expertise. I know that, confronted with a condemned felon, however vile his proven crimes, I myself could never pull the lever, throw the switch, or press the plunger to kill him. The failing is mine, I freely admit; but the fact remains. I therefore have no right to ask someone else to do it on my behalf.

(A parallel reason is one - of many - why I became a vegetarian. The time came when I could no longer slaughter the chickens I used to keep. I believe that I have no right to ask other people to do it on my behalf.)

To go further: Suppose that I can nonetheless be persuaded to forget my scruples and hire a deputy to do that which I can not. (I now address you as one Christian to another.) We have a responsibility to each other for the well-being not only of body but of soul. The task of executioner inevitably lays a shadow on a man's soul - a shadow which could too easily become a stain. Have we the right, as a society, to lay such a burden on the soul of any of our fellows, made in God's image?

You may well consider these objections to be insubstantial ones; but they carry weight with this contributor, at least.

I do agree heartily, though, that any alternative to capital punishment ought to be condign and effective.

A Thought.
Just as your stance on Cannabis brings on the pro brigade . Surely your slant on death. will bring on the Mediums and Clairvoyants. Unlike the pro drugists, these will have forseen this, and their response will be far better put together A balanced argument of immense quality
Or on the other hand, not forseen anything at all.

Given our recent exchange on the death penalty (and the word limit here) I have sketched out a fuller explanation of my position and what I was getting at when our discussion turned to the value of life question and what happens if or when the emphasis shifts to the victim. If you are interested you can read it by clicking my name. If not, then that's okay too.

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